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During the Second Battle of El Alamein the Allied forces of the 8th army lead by General Bernard Montgomery (pictured) defeated the Axis forces lead by Field Marshal Erwin Rommel
The Sahara is cold at night, and for the young soldiers waiting to go into battle, it felt perishing. Many, such as those in the Durham Brigade, were only wearing shirts, shorts and flimsy pullovers, and shivered while they clutched their rifles.

Nearby were soldiers from an Australian battalion, one of whom, a Private Crawford, took pity on a youthful-looking private in the Durhams, and gave him his sweater.

Two hours later, an enormous barrage started up from the British guns, the like of which had not been seen since World War I. The soldiers, many now trembling more from fear than cold, advanced into what swiftly became a terrifying and chaotic inferno.

Bullets from German 'Spandau' machine guns cracked around them, and many found their targets. Scores of men soon lay on the desert sand, screaming for their mothers, their limbs ripped off by the terrific firepower of what the Germans grimly called 'the bonesaw'.

For those who were still going forward, the dust and smoke made it impossible to get their sense of direction. Men found themselves nearly alone, with perhaps three or four others around them. Incongruously, the sound of bagpipes could be heard above the sound of mortar and gun fire, geeing the men on as they haphazardly advanced.

Among those who managed to keep going was Private Crawford, who would survive the horrors of that night and many more. But the following morning, as he walked around the battlefield looking at the dead, one body particularly grabbed his attention. It was that of the young lad from the Durhams.

'For the little boy-faced Tommy there is no thrill of victory,' Crawford later wrote, 'no pride in a job splendidly done. He lies on his back as if asleep, still in my sweater, 100 yards off where I gave it to him. His chest is riddled but not very bloody; the holes are neat. Spandau Joe did not miss this time.'

As one soldier later recalled: 'We thought it would be a walkover,' but the battle, which began exactly 70 years ago today near a dusty and insignificant Egyptian coastal railway station called El Alamein, 150 miles north-west of Cairo, was anything but.

For nearly two weeks, 200,000 men and officers from Britain and the Empire - without the Americans - fought against more than 100,000 Germans and Italians in one of the most bloody and attritional battles of the war.

Although the Allies famously won, El Alamein would take a very high toll. The fighting would result in more than 13,500 Allied casualties, of whom some 4,500 were killed. The Allies lost nearly 500 tanks and 100 aircraft, as well as more than 100 pieces of artillery.

Despite these losses, El Alamein is regarded as a glorious chapter in the annals of British military history.

For Winston Churchill, the battle marked what he called the 'turning of the Hinge of Fate' - the pivotal point at which the fortunes of war finally went against the Axis powers. 'It may almost be said,' he wrote later, 'before Alamein we never had a victory. After Alamein we never had a defeat'.'

Churchill ordered church bells to ring out throughout Britain in celebration of the battle and the subsequent Allied landings in North Africa. For many, El Alamein ranks as a victory alongside those of Trafalgar, Waterloo and the Battle of Britain.

But today, seven decades after the event, others dispute that El Alamein really deserves its place in the pantheon of great British victories. These detractors maintain it was a pointless battle in a pointless campaign, fought for political reasons to boost morale throughout the Empire, and not from any great strategic necessity.
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The battle of El Alamein, named after a village on Egypt's Mediterranean coast, ended in the victory of the British Eighth Army over Rommel's Afrika Korps. It was said to be the turning point in the war in Africa
Furthermore, they say, the Allies were led by a hugely over-rated and unimaginative commander in the form of Bernard Montgomery, a man who should never have been raised to the status of national hero, and was regarded by at least one American general as 'a little fart'.

El Alamein was won not by tactical skill, they add, but simply because the Allies had more men and machinery at their disposal.

So what is the truth? Was it the pivotal battle of the war? Or was El Alamein and the North Africa campaign an Imperial indulgence that needlessly cost thousands of lives?

To answer these questions, we have to look at why the Allies were in North Africa in the first place.

Although some thought that the best way to defeat Hitler was simply to advance from London to Berlin in as straight a line as possible, Churchill and the Chief of the Imperial General Staff, Sir Alan Brooke, understood the situation was more complex than merely attempting to smash through France and the Low Countries en route to storming the German capital.

In the view of British planners, clearing North Africa of Germans and Italians was not only the key to holding the Suez canal and vital Middle Eastern oilfields, but also to providing a stronghold from which to attack Italy, which Churchill called the 'soft underbelly of the Axis'.
'I am positive that our policy for the conduct of the war should be to direct both our military and political efforts towards the early conquest of North Africa,' Brooke wrote in his diary on December 3, 1941. 'From there, we shall be able to reopen the Mediterranean and to stage offensive operations against Italy.'
By the time the battle of El Alamein started on October 23, 1942, the British and Empire forces had been fighting the Germans and Italians in North Africa for over two years. The campaign was like a pendulum, with both sides oscillating between defeat and victory.

However, in June 1942, the celebrated German commander Erwin Rommel had captured the strategically vital harbour of Tobruk in Libya, which dealt a huge blow to the Allies, not least because Rommel had also captured 25,000 British troops.

'This was one of the heaviest blows I can recall during the war,' Churchill wrote. 'Not only were its military effects grievous, but it had affected the reputation of the British armies ... It was a bitter moment. Defeat is one thing. Disgrace is another.'

Churchill had a point. Tobruk was the latest in a series of disasters for the British that included the retreat from Dunkirk, the botched Norwegian campaign, the shameful fall of Singapore, the sinking of the Prince of Wales and Repulse, and the doomed raid on Dieppe.

What Churchill wanted was a victory, and he wanted one quickly. He not only needed to deliver something that would silence a growing body of detractors in Parliament, but also one that would raise the spirits of the British people.

Furthermore, and perhaps more vitally still, the British also needed to convince their Allies - who included the Americans and the Free French - that they were capable of winning battles. With a huge seaborne invasion by the Allies of western North Africa being planned for late 1942, that need was even more crucial.

'Another reverse would not only be disastrous in itself,' Churchill recalled, 'but would damage British prestige and influence in the discussions we were having with our American Allies.'

However, if Rommel were to be defeated, then Churchill reckoned that the Americans would take the British more seriously - and that would ultimately help win the war.

By October 1942, Rommel's army was at the limit of its supply lines as it advanced east towards Cairo, and had dug in behind a huge series of minefields. Rommel had 116,000 men at his disposal, along with around 550 tanks, the same number of artillery pieces and nearly 500 aircraft. It was an awesome force, but not as awesome as the one that faced him.

Since September, the British commander, Bernard Montgomery, had amassed a truly massive war machine, consisting of nearly 200,000 men, more than 1,000 tanks, around 1,000 artillery pieces and more than 500 aircraft. With a superior number of men and machinery, and with the RAF the masters of the air, it looked as if the forthcoming battle could only go one way.

However, Montgomery himself had his doubts, not least because he did not rate the ability of his men. He found it 'a regrettable fact that our troops are not, in all cases, highly trained', and he feared he could easily lose his numerical advantage to experienced Axis forces.

As a result, British troops even had to be trained to hate the enemy, and in order to make them more aggressive, lectures were given in German brutality, and assault courses were splattered in blood and entrails from slaughterhouses.

Never the most imaginative of commanders, Montgomery decided to keep his tactics for the forthcoming attack simple. He would start with a massive artillery barrage, and then attack Rommel in the north and the south, with the main thrust being in the north. In essence, Montgomery's plan was no more sophisticated than the tactics of World War I that had cost so many lives.
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Procession: Members of the ceremonial Catafalque party stand together during commemorations for the 70th anniversary of the Battle of El Alamein
The opening barrage of the battle on the night of October 23 was truly one of shock and awe, and struck fear into the hearts of many of the Germans and Italians. All 882 artillery pieces were fired so that their shells landed at exactly the same time. As one Australian soldier observed, 'the whole horizon to the east spewed heavenwards in a fount of orange and blood-red flame, stabbing at the sky'.

'On the dot, hell broke loose,' recalled a New Zealander, and it was a hell into which Montgomery's troops had to advance, with the terrifying inferno artillery barrage creeping forward just in front of them. However, despite its ferocity, the artillery had not been as effective as it was hoped, and the Allied advance was severely hampered by strong German counter-attacks and huge minefields, through which it took ages to clear paths.

What made the advance even slower was that the paths through the mines, when they were cleared, were narrower than a tennis court, which meant that the Allied tanks had to proceed in a vulnerable single file.

Worse still, the Allies' Sherman tanks were very likely to explode when they were hit by enemy fire, as their ammunition was stored in the front of their hulls. Not for nothing did the Germans call them 'Tommy cookers'.

In the south, the advance faltered completely, and progress in the north was little better. After two days, despite his forces' massive numerical superiority, Montgomery had only been able to drive a small wedge into Rommel's front.

A meeting was held at 3.30 one morning, in which Montgomery was urged by his fellow officers to change his plan, but he insisted on sticking with it.

One of those present at the meeting recalled how there was a certain 'atmosphere' while Montgomery berated his commanders for their lack of resolve, while never acknowledging that there might have been a flaw in his ham-fisted tactics, which had seen the loss of more than 300 tanks in just two days.

Nevertheless, Montgomery continued trying to force his way through, and the Allied losses continued to mount. By October 29 - six days into the battle - Montgomery was forced to withdraw his troops and to regroup for another attack.

Unsurprisingly, Churchill was apoplectic, and vented his spleen all over his Chief of General Staff. 'When I went to Winston,' Sir Alan Brooke recalled, 'I was met by a flow of abuse of Monty. What was my Monty doing now, allowing the battle to peter out?'
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Poppies for the fallen: Wreaths lie waiting at the El Alamein Commonwealth War Graves cemetery on Saturday
Although Brooke managed to convince Churchill that Montgomery knew what he was doing, privately, he was less sure. 'Personally, I was far from being at peace,' Brooke later wrote.

Finally, at the beginning of November, Montgomery launched another assault, which he optimistically codenamed 'Supercharge'. It was the RAF that led the attack, bombing Rommel's forces for a merciless seven hours, destroying telephone lines and fuel supplies.

Once again, the Allied tanks and troops advanced into an inferno of noise and dust. The fighting soon became close quarter, and with it, more vicious.

One New Zealander, Private Maiki Parkinson, was told by a non-commissioned officer to shoot three Germans who were pleading with him to be merciful, but they had still not raised their hands in surrender. 'Shoot the bastards, Maiki, or I'll shoot you!'

Parkinson hesitated, and was urged again to shoot. 'They were crouched in this trench,' he later said, 'and I shot them with my Tommy Gun.' Parkinson would always regret doing so.

Eventually, after seeing off a German counter-attack, Montgomery at last broke through the German lines on November 4. Rommel was forced to retreat, although Hitler ordered him to stand firm and fight to the last drop of blood. Unfortunately, a cautious Montgomery did not seize this opportunity to capture the whole of Rommel's army, and after fighting a rearguard action, Rommel was able to escape with much of his surviving army.

Nevertheless, Montgomery had given Churchill what he needed - a much-needed victory. The Prime Minister was keen to order church bells to be rung out straight away, for the first time since the outbreak of war, but he was cautioned to wait and see how the forthcoming Allied landings in North Africa would go. As it happened, they went well, and the bells did indeed ring out.

Looking back at those events from today, it is easy to dismiss El Alamein as a political victory, but that is to ignore just how vital politics are in waging wars.

Today, we often talk about trying to win over the hearts and minds of our potential enemies, but El Alamein shows that it is just as crucial to win over the hearts and minds of one's own people, without which it is impossible to fight a war, let alone win it.

El Alamein may not have been an elegant victory, and Montgomery may have been a ponderous general who was happy to steal much of the credit from the RAF, but it was a battle that gave the British what it most badly needed - confidence with which to go on and win the war.